After the pair got into a petty spat over voting records and the future of the GOP, tech titan Elon Musk is encouraging former president Trump to retire from politics and stay out of the 2024 presidential race.
Speaking at a rally in Alaska on Saturday, Trump blasted Elon Musk’s recent claim that he voted for a Republican for the first time last month.
“He said the other day, ‘Oh, I’ve never voted for a Republican.’ I said, ‘I didn’t know that,'” Trump said at the event for Alaska Republicans Sarah Palin and Governor Mike Dunleavy. “He told me he voted for me, so he’s another bullsh*t artist.”
Musk responded on Twitter Monday: “I don’t hate the man, but it’s time for Trump to hang up his hat & sail into the sunset.”
“Dems should also call off the attack – don’t make it so that Trump’s only way to survive is to regain the Presidency,” he added.
The Tesla CEO has signaled his support for Florida Governor Ron DeSantis as an alternative to Trump. While Trump would still defeat the GOP’s top contenders, including Governor Ron DeSantis, in head-to-head matchups, according to a new New York Times poll, roughly half of Republican voters prefer someone other than Trump to be the party’s nominee in 2024.
Musk also voiced concerns about Trump’s age and argued that DeSantis is such a quality candidate that Biden would be soundly defeated rather than if Trump were his opponent.
“Trump would be 82 at end of term, which is too old to be chief executive of anything, let alone the United States of America,” he wrote. “If DeSantis runs against Biden in 2024, then DeSantis will easily win – he doesn’t even need to campaign.”
Musk’s comments come after his attempted acquisition of Twitter, by which he vowed to transform the platform’s content moderation policies to be more politically inclusive. However, he now appears to be withdrawing from the $44 billion takeover agreement, alleging that the company refused to disclose information about spam bot accounts, giving him the right to call the deal off.
In May, Musk promised to restore Trump’s access to Twitter after he was banned for his involvement in the Capitol riot. Twitter claimed his continued presence on the platform posed a “risk of further incitement of violence.” While Trump said he would never rejoin if given the chance, deciding instead to invest in his own version of the social media forum, Truth Social, Musk disagreed with the Twitter decision to ban the former president.
“I do think it was not correct to ban Donald Trump. I think that was a mistake,” Musk said at a May 10 event hosted by the Financial Times. “It alienated a large part of the country and did not ultimately result in Donald Trump not having a voice.”
While the billionaire said he harbored no ill will for Trump, Musk suggested that he is too saddled with political baggage and has too corrosive of a demeanor to be entertained as a serious possibility for president again.
“…too much drama. Do we really want a bull in a china shop situation every single day!? Also, I think the legal maximum age for start of Presidential term should be 69,” Musk tweeted. There is currently no age maximum for presidential eligibility.